Elongated compressed gas cylinders are ubiquitous throughout a wide spectrum of manufacturing and service industries. The cylinders are found wherever a source of compressed gas is needed, most typically in welding facilities. The need has long existed for improved handling and transportation equipment to facilitate use with various different pieces of equipment and for removal of the cylinders for recharging when emptied.
Handling and moving gas filled cylinders is particularly onerous due to the heavy weight of a cylinder and danger posed by the relatively high pressure of the contents. Such gas cylinders are unwieldy as well and typically are not particularly stable without a separate supporting structure of some type. These characteristics are inherent in their design, which requires hemispherical ends to efficiently withstand the relatively high pressures of the compressed gas contents.
The significant weight and unwieldy nature of compressed gas cylinders prohibits workers with physical limitations, such as back problems or even more serious disabilities, from effectively and comfortably performing tasks requiring transporting or positioning of such cylinders. Additionally, repeated handling of heavy, awkward cylinders can lead to back and knee problems or other job related injuries, such as hernias, crushed fingers and the like.
Without more convenient means for safely handling and transporting compressed gas cylinders, the potential for serious accidents makes the use of compressed gas cylinders a hazardous proposition. Were a filled cylinder to fall over and fracture its valve for example, the cylinder would become a lethal rocket projectile. Dangerous, highly flammable gases, such as acetylene or MAPP gas, could also be rapidly vented in great volume and ignited by an ignition source, producing an explosion.
Although the problems associated with the handling and transport of compressed gas cylinders are recognized, no currently available transporter adequately addresses all of the concerns. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,937 to Fawley is essentially a modified hand truck which may provide relatively safe transport of a compressed gas cylinder, but its limitations are obvious. Only two sizes of cylinder are provided for, and no variable adjustment means is present which will allow a cylinder to be conveniently positioned to a predetermined vertical height, thus affording easy exchange of gas cylinders between various different pieces of equipment used in conjunction with such cylinders.